Two Charts Illustrate How the Great Recession Never Really Left Us

A couple of chart from the Consumer Metrics Institute show how the economic contraction may be over for Bernanke, Geithner and Goldman Sachs, but is firmly entrenched for the rest of us.

The first chart is a comparison of the 91-Day Growth Indexes during the quarterly period immediately following the beginning of a contraction. The events of 2008 and 2010 are shown against the same scale of annualized contraction, with 2010 in blue.

The second chart is CMI's Contraction Severity Gauge. What can that possibly be? Apart from a gauge which measures the severity of a contraction, I mean? Well, it's the number of percentage-days of contraction experienced during the 'Great Recession of 2007-2009' compared to the 2010 contraction, with 2010 shown both to-date and projected.

The full Consumer Metrics Institute analysis is here, with more detailed analysis of the group's consumer leading indicators can be found here. But the bottom line is that the purported "economic recovery" is really a phantom for the majority of the country. While the pain of the economic crisis was felt deeply on Main Street, the gain of recovery has essentially been confined to Wall Street.